1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method performing color correction in accordance with a feature of a color area to be color-corrected when an image input by a scanner, a camera or the like is output to a printer or a display.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the chances of handling photographs as digital image data have been increasing with the spread of personal computers, the Internet, printers for home use and the like and with the increase of the capacity of recording media. As a result, digital cameras have been becoming popular as means for inputting digital photographic image data (hereinafter simplified as “image data”).
In a process of producing a photographic print from the image data taken by a digital camera, a correction process is generally performed on the image data so as to be reproduced to have appropriate colors and density. Namely, in a process of reproducing colors, it is important that colors are reproduced so that a person feels the reproduced colors are appealing. Therefore, colors expressing a human skin color, blue of blue sky, green of trees and grasses, and the like are required to be reproduced so that a person feels the reproduced colors are appealing.
As an example of an image processing method focusing on the colors of human skin, there is a known method in which a human face area is automatically extracted from image data and the color data of the extracted human face area are corrected so as to have a density within the target density range or so as to have a color similar to the target color (chromaticity). Further, in such a correction method, when plural human faces are taken and included in the image data, it is conceived that an average density of all the face areas is calculated and a correction is uniformly made with respect to each face area based on the difference between the calculated averaged density value and a target density value.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2006-33382 discloses a method in which a predetermined color area is extracted; each importance level with respect to the corresponding extracted color areas is automatically determined based on, for example, the size of the area, the position of the area in the image data; a single overall representative color is calculated by weighted averaging the representative colors of the extracted areas, the weighting of each extracted area being determined based on the determined importance level of the corresponding area; and the color correction is performed in a manner so that the calculated overall representative color is corrected to a target color.
However, colors and density of human faces may vary greatly. Therefore, for example, in a case where plural colors of the human faces are distributed in both directions from a center target color, if a single overall representative color is determined by performing weighted averaging plural representative colors of each face based on the corresponding importance levels of the extracted areas of the faces and representative colors are uniformly corrected in the same manner as the correction from the determined overall representative color to the target color, some colors of the faces may be more separated from the target color than when compared with a case before the color correction is performed.